In order of importance and solemnity, Christmas is now accorded its rightful place in Scotland's index of custom and practice – that is somewhere below the annual month-long festival of Robert Burns. It can only be a matter of time before Burns calendars begin to appear instead of Advent ones. In this way, we will be able to count down the weeks and days before 25 January by opening little windows to reveal scenes from the poet's canon. In one will sit a rosy cheek'd maiden with a fetching bonnet in a suitably rural setting; in others: a red, red rose; a horse with no tail and a tim'rous beastie that, on closer inspection, will bear a resemblance to a mouse.

The annual homage to Burns in this country is now on a messianic scale and in recent years it has also begun to exhibit cultish aspects. Yet I owe Burns a debt of gratitude and have often felt moved to raise many glasses of beer in his honour, although thankfully not too often in the maudlin, tartan hell of the modern Burns supper. One year, as I prepared to face my English higher examination, I was presented with what can only be described as an uninspiring and anodyne list of verse from which to choose a poem. Instead, and against the school's advice, I found refuge in the splendid "Holy Willie's Prayer" and the Bard duly piloted me to a mark far higher than I may otherwise have gained.

This school was in Ayrshire, not far from Burns's birthplace and I remember thinking it was a little curious that his work was not then at the centre of the English higher prospectus. Little has changed in the intervening 30 years and I find it incredible that the study of the life and work of Robert Burns is not a prescribed element of any English certificate in a Scottish school. Last week, I conducted a poll of friends and family and asked simply if any of them had encountered the work of our national poet in their school years. Not a single person in an admittedly tight circle could properly name a work of his, far less recite a couple of lines.

Not long ago, Fiona Hyslop, then the cabinet minister for education in the first SNP government – and herself no mean Burns scholar –moved to ensure that the study of Scottish history would become obligatory in all of Scotland's schools. This must now also be extended to the study of Burns and, while we're at it, so should a basic introduction to Gaelic, another ancient Scottish treasure.

There are some who would recoil at the prospect of such a campaign. In these febrile days, when the very nature of what it means to be Scottish is being examined and measured, there are many in the Scottish Labour party who would scream that such a move would be insular and divisive. Presumably, among them would be those chancers who called for the resignation of Joan McAlpine, the nationalist MSP, who had accused Labour of being anti-Scottish for siding with the Tories as the independence campaign kicked off.

One of them is Anas Sarwar, who has somehow risen without trace to become deputy leader of the Labour party in Scotland. Such is the poverty of ideas in Labour now that Sarwar, lamentably, played the race card during his hysterical reaction to McAlpine's intervention. Sarwar is at the start of his political career. Someone with real authority in Scottish Labour should gently put an arm around him and suggest that if he can't handle merely being accused of anti-Scottishness in the course of what promises to be a rumbustious campaign he might wish to pursue another career. Being a librarian springs to mind.

Nor should the nationalists try to seek to portray Burns as some icon of Scottish independence. Where were their forebears when it took the intervention of William and Dorothy Wordsworth to ensure that a fitting memorial to their recently deceased contemporary was erected? I am no Burns scholar, but if the fires of nationalist fury had burned within his breast I doubt very much if he would have taken a job as an exciseman, raising taxes for the English crown. Burns loved Scotland and its rich language, just as he also loved operating in an Anglified Edinburgh cafe society where he could indulge his passion for removing the foundation garments of titled and powdered ladies.

The nearest that many of us get to our poet, though, is when we also have to endure the dreadful appurtenances of a Burns supper. At these events, half of male and civic Scotland can be found wearing kilts without due care and attention and in an irresponsible manner. Yet I suppose that the wearing of this regrettable piece of apparel is appropriate on these occasions for it is just as trashy and artificial as the horrors that will often unfold in the course of the evening. Think of a gathering where the members of golf clubs, bowling clubs and Rotary clubs get together in all their bewhiskered and incontinent splendour. There to drink whisky until it seeps from every orifice while exchanging naughty seaside jokes and crooked handshakes.

Only recently have women begun to gain admittance and when they do they invariably raise the quality of the occasion. One such is the estimable Scottish entertainer Karen Dunbar, who helped me endure one of these evenings by delivering the most wonderful and animated "Tam o' Shanter" that I have ever heard. It made me immediately want to buy a collection of Burns's works and memorise it before my brain cells complete the process of detaching themselves from each other and floating away in odd directions.

I am no Burns scholar, but I like to delude myself occasionally that I could have been a contender. And so I offer this, one of my verses written after another of these bacchanals toasting the Bard.

One Glasgow night of aberration
When kilted goblins with libation
Toasted Burns in tawdry exultation
All pished as farts
Not even armed with banjo could they
Hit a coo's arse